Rocky welcome for Bush in Latin America

President Bush wrapped up a tour of Latin America on Mar. 14 with little to show for his six-day swing through the region. He headed home with no substantive deals or immediate evidence that the public relations offensive had salvaged Washington's reputation in the five countries he visited. His trip was marked by loud, and sometimes violent, protests, alongside rebukes from most of the foreign leaders with whom he met. Bush hoped to soften hostility towards himself and his administration's policies on trade and immigration by expressing concern for the region's poor. His stops in Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico, chosen for their relatively friendly governments, received lukewarm to cold reviews by local media. Meanwhile, Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, stole some of the attention by denouncing the "little imperial gentleman from the north" during a shadow tour. Chávez drew adoring crowds in Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Jamaica and Haiti, and announced several oil-funded aid and trade packages. Domestic constraints prevented Bush from offering significant economic deals to Uruguay and Brazil, prompting taunts from Chávez that the gringo was a "political cadaver." The Bush administration is hoping that his Mexican counterpart, Felipe Calderón, who heads one of the strongest economies in Latin America, will be a regional counterbalance to Chávez. But Bush's meeting with Calderón was overshadowed by anger at a new border fence that the host likened to the Berlin Wall. In an interview with a Mexican newspaper, Calderón said he did not have high hopes for the Bush meeting and said he wanted closer ties to Cuba, suggesting that it was too late for Bush to patch up nearly two terms' worth of disappointments. Even before Bush arrived, Calderón had called on the US government to do more about drug trafficking, lashed out at the new fencing along the border and said he would never be used as a "battering ram" against left-leaning governments in Latin America that have less than warm relations with Washington. His press office also distributed an information packet to journalists in which the Mexican government pointed out that Bush now finds himself in a phase of "growing unpopularity," and that pre-election fervor has already begun in the United States, even though Bush's term does not end until January 2009. Hundreds of demonstrators marched to the US Embassy in Mexico City on Mar. 13, attacking riot police with concrete blocks, metal bars and firecrackers and tearing down barricades. Mexican police responded by unleashing tear gas and pepper spray, throwing rocks and clubbing demonstrators with batons. The demonstrators burned US flags and waved banners with slogans such as: "Bush you are not welcome in Mexico. Go to Hell." The day before, protesters shouting "Bush, you killer! Get out!" hurled stones at his hotel as he arrived in Mexico. One protester climbed the awning of the former US consulate nearby and spray-painted over the State Department seal. Bush's Latin American odyssey began on Mar. 8 in Brazil. On the eve of Bush's visit, landless farmers, most of them women from the Via Campesina farmworkers movement, briefly shut down an iron ore mine, invaded an ethanol distillery and took over the Rio de Janeiro offices of Brazil's National Development Bank in protest. But if Bush needed a reminder of his growing unpopularity in Latin America, it was in Sao Paulo the next day in the shape of a 10,000-strong human wave marching noisily through the financial district. There was none of the famed Brazilian hospitality. Fresh graffiti reading "Get Out, Bush! Assassin!" in bright red letters popped up along busy highways. Even before Bush arrived, the protesters were out en masse. "Persona non grata" read one placard. "Get out you Nazi" said another. In case the message still hadn't hit home, there was one other taunt–this time in English: "Bush, kill yourself." Hours before Bush touched down in Sao Paulo, protests broke out across Brazil. In Rio de Janeiro, the US consulate was splattered with red paint. In Porto Alegre, protesters burned Bush dolls. The center of Sao Paulo erupted in violence. There was even a special group formed by students to track down the president, calling itself the Bush Hunt Command. The group gathered with the aim of chasing Bush through the streets and forcing him to listen to their message. Students, environmentalists and left-leaning Brazilians held a largely peaceful march through the heart of Sao Paulo before police fired tear gas at protesters and beat them with batons. Hundreds fled and ducked into businesses to avoid the chaos, some of them bloodied. The following day, Guatemala's president, Oscar Berger, complained to his visitor about the arrest and deportation of hundreds of Guatemalan workers in raids in Massachusetts last week. Resentment at the hardships immigrants face as well as the war in Iraq prompted a Mayan tribe in Guatemala to perform a ritual cleansing at a site visited by Bush. "That a person like [Bush], with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," said Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders. Tiney said the "spirit guides of the Mayan community" decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace. Meanwhile in the capital, riot police used tear gas to quell protesters who threw eggs and stones and set fire to US flags. Some 150 student protesters blocked off a street in Guatemala City near two US fast food outlets to burn a US flag and set off firecrackers for Bush's arrival. "We've burned this flag for what the Yankees did all over the world. We remember the CIA's policy in our country, which promoted scorched-earth policies and the bloodshed of our people," a protester shouted, standing on a car. The CIA helped overthrow a democratically elected socialist government in Guatemala in 1954 and US-backed troops destroyed entire Mayan villages in a counter-insurgency campaign at the peak of Guatemala's 1960-96 civil war. US involvement in the war, which left nearly a quarter of a million people dead or missing, makes Bush's presence in Guatemala offensive to the nation's ethnic Mayan people, protester Jorge Morales Toj said. Washington has a long history of bloody intervention in the region, from Guatemala to Chile and Nicaragua, to oust democratic governments it has not approved of. More recently, funds provided by the US Congress were directed to opponents of Chávez who launched a short-lived coup in 2002. The president's next stop in Uruguay saw anti-Bush hysteria in the region only escalate. When Bush landed in the capital of Montevideo, Chávez went on the attack just across the river in Argentina. Chávez spoke to tens of thousands of anti-Bush protesters in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires, and with the blessing of Argentine President Nestor Kirchner. Kirchner's aides helped organize the rally. "Much has been said lately about how there are countries that should contain other countries, as in the case of [Brazilian] President Lula [da Silva] or of us, that we must contain President Chávez," Kirchner said. "Absolute error. We are building with brother President Chávez space in South America for the happiness of our people." Chávez, who regularly calls Bush "the devil," thanked Kirchner for defending him from "those who surrendered to North American imperialism and permitted the plunder of the homeland." Nearly 20,000 fans gathered at a stadium to hear Chávez bash Bush. And the Venezuelan leader didn't disappoint them. For two hours, Chávez heaped scorn on the president. Shouts of "Gringo go home!" erupted in the stands. "We are here to show our support of Chávez and our repudiation of Bush and imperialism," said Claudio Hernandez, a Chilean in the crowd. "We are against Bush because of his oil wars and his other policies, which go against the people of the world." Chávez told his sympathizers that Bush's tour would fail to improve the United States' image and dismissed his pledges of US aid as a cynical attempt to "confuse" Latin Americans. "I believe one has to give the president of the United States a medal for hypocrisy because he has said he is concerned about poverty in Latin America," he said. The Venezuelan leader said it was US free-market policies that had impoverished the region, along with Washington's tolerance of right-wing dictatorships in decades past. In neighboring Uruguay, anti-US sentiment was also running high. Bush demonstrators scuffled with bystanders and shattered windows at a US fast-food restaurant in Montevideo. About 20 people were arrested after an estimated 6,000 people took to the streets. "Exterminate the Empire!" a masked woman spray-painted on a business facade. The next day, Bush spoke of the US care for the "human condition" and its "quiet, effective diplomacy." "I would call our diplomacy quiet and effective... aimed at helping people, elevating the human condition, aimed at expressing the great compassion of the American people," he said. Before reaching his final destination in Mexico, Bush's voyage included a brief visit to the US's favorite client state, Colombia, where protests continued apace. The US president was received with hearty back slaps by Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe, a close ally whose country has received more than $4.5 billion from Washington since 2000 to fight drug trafficking and leftist rebels. But Bush faces an uphill battle delivering a free trade agreement and further aid because some in Congress are concerned over Colombia's record on labor rights and the government's ties to right-wing paramilitary death squads. The demonstrations were smaller because more than 22,000 soldiers and police had been deployed in the streets of Bogotá for Bush's six-hour visit. Airspace over the capital was closed, military helicopters were circling the city, and alcohol sales were banned. Nevertheless, about 200 masked students at Bogotá's National University clashed with 300 riot police, spray-painting anti-US slogans on walls and shouting "Out Bush!" and "Uribe, paramilitary, the people are angry." Police fired water cannons and tear gas, and the students hurled back rocks, metal barriers, fireworks, a few Molotov cocktails and dozens of "potato bombs"–small explosives made of gunpowder wrapped in foil.